EDITORIAL: Political change is coming to Texas

By Enterprise editorial staff

Updated 12:37 pm, Friday, August 19, 2016

By this time in most presidential campaigns, the Republican nominee is ahead of his Democratic counterpart in Texas by 16 percentage points. Or 26. This year, Donald Trump is ahead of Hillary Clinton by just 6 points.

Part of the credit for that slim margin goes to Trump himself, who is unpopular even with many Republicans. But in the bigger picture, it's also clear that Texas is changing like previously reliably Red states like Florida, Virginia or North Carolina.

That's happening because the population of those states and Texas is changing. Hispanics make up the largest ethnic group among Texas children. Right now, Trump trails Clinton among Texas voters who are minorities and those are younger than 65 - in other words, the future of the state. You don't have to be a sociologist to figure out that the older, white voters who are still solidly Republican won't be around forever.

All statewide elected officials are Republican, but they need to recognize these demographic and cultural realities if they want their party to keep winning elections, A good place to start would be the coming session of the Legislature, when Republicans could show some flexibility on issues that have broad, popular support but can't gain any traction in the House or Senate.

Louisiana recently elected a Democratic governor, for example, and one of the first things John Bel Edwards did was expand Medicaid coverage under Obamacare, just like 30 other states had already done, including some run by Republicans.

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Overnight, thousands of poor or older residents of Louisiana had access to some kind of organized health care - some for the first time in their lives. That simple change made sick people healthier, allowed workers to be more productive and boosted struggling hospitals and clinics.

Changes like that can happen in Texas, if the Republican leadership can look beyond its short-term hold on power. Eventually, it will happen one way or another. It's not just good governance, it's good politics.